Friday, December 12, 2008

I might still be a little sedated...wheeeee

Most everyone I know has had them out by now. They got it done when they were 20 and didn't have to take time off work and could have their parents pay for it.

The thing is, that when everyone else's wisdom teeth were growing in and being pulled out, and I'd hear horror stories and terms like "impacted" and "had to break my jaw," I was waiting for my teeth to show up.

Little did I know, my teeth were just slowly, surely growing in like normal teeth. I didn't even know I had them until 2 years ago when I was at the dentist and he asked if I had a plan of attack for my wisdom teeth. "Uh, let's cross that bridge when we come to it," I scoffed. "Well, no, I mean you have all four of them right here.""I do?" He handed me the little circular dentist mirror to point them out. "That's what those are? They're wisdom teeth? I thought they were teeth teeth."

But then, like all things in my life, everything went wrong. And the teeth all started to rot out of my skull. And my dentist suggested that maybe I should just pull them out since they all needed major work and were going to continue to need lots of care for the rest of my life.

And so here we are. For weeks I've listened to everyone else's stories about their wisdom teeth. My anxiety grew and grew. I was certain that I was going to die during the procedure. A tooth would come loose from the pliers and launch into my brain...somehow.

But then all of my nervousness went away the second they brought out the laughing gas. And they brought it out rather quickly, to my surprise. It was like, "Here, sit down. And...now breathe this." Before I even had my IV or was hooked up to blood pressure monitors. Before the oral surgeon was in the room.

And I looooved it. I could hear two nurses speaking in spanish outside my room. But their words were soooo sloooow. And then I looked over and saw the monitor with my blood pressure and I watched the number drop from 90 to 85, 75, 70, 69, 68, 67... Wait should it stop dropping at some point? Oh well I don't care.

I was actually genuinely disappointed when the oral surgeon was hooking up my IV and I knew I'd be asleep in a minute and my awesome high would be over.

Now I'm home, watching TV and wondering if anything I type makes sense. Today I learned that it's worth having 4 teeth ripped out of your head for 5 minutes of laughing gas and a day off work.